The un-Hillary

In the three weeks since Kerry succeeded Clinton as secretary of state, he’s already sent unmistakable signals of his independence with a more assertive, proactive and risk-taking stewardship of America’s foreign policy — with a more sustained focus on the Middle East and Europe than his predecessor, according to current and former administration officials.

Kerry, officials say, views the job as the apex of his up-and-down 40-year political career and aspires to a more central policymaking role in the Obama administration than Clinton, who practiced what one official called “odometer diplomacy” — a focus on globetrotting to bolster America’s relationships abroad coupled with attempts to cope with an array of pop-up crises.

As head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry was a staunch supporter of Clinton’s, fiercely defending her in the wake of the Benghazi attack. But she’s not necessarily his model for how to do the job. He’s more drawn to power players of recent history — George Shultz, James Baker, Henry Kissinger and George Marshall — secretaries who have wielded considerably more influence inside the White House than Clinton.

“He’s going to be more willing than Hillary was to tackle the big things… If he were able to help broker an exit for [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, for instance, that would be huge for him,” says a veteran senior diplomat who knows Kerry and has served as an adviser to officials in both parties.

It’s not that Clinton didn’t try to do big things, State Department watchers say. But Obama’s determination to avoid new foreign entanglements — and his insistence on tight control over diplomacy — dictated a narrower approach, focusing on women’s rights and smaller international initiatives, like re-establishing relations with Myanmar.

Former State Department official Aaron David Miller says Kerry can afford to be “more ambitious” because he poses less of a threat to Obama’s team — and he predicts Kerry will seek to carve out a Mr. Fix-It role on foreign policy similar to what Vice President Joe Biden has managed to annex on domestic policy.

“Kerry is not Hillary, and this is a second term. Kerry will have a lot more discretion — assuming he doesn’t screw up,” says Miller, a Middle East scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

“Hillary had to travel, she made a virtue out of necessity. The president was not going to let her dominate on foreign policy… he’s the most domineering president on foreign policy we’ve had since Nixon,” he added. “In a way history is going to be crueler to Kerry, if he can’t figure out a way to be a more conventional secretary of state. He doesn’t have Clinton’s ascendant arc. The bar for Kerry in the job is much higher because this is his last act, and he knows it. He’s going to want to have a more meaningful role.”